Running head: BUILDING HOME ONLINE

Building Home Online: A Community Wiki as Homeplace Rhetoric William R. Upchurch Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

BUILDING HOME ONLINE Abstract

Based on more than a decade of participant observation, this paper examines the ways in which a global network of roleplaying game enthusiasts rhetorically constructed an online community out of conflict. Specifically, I will look at the role of a site wiki in helping create a shared narrative that provided a rallying point for disparate communities to coalesce into a single community identity. Marginalized by their hobbies and interests, online fans look for three characteristics in seeking an online homeplace: a place that is safe for their outsider discourses, welcoming of their identities as fans, and offers the opportunity to establish and improve their status and power through non-traditional means. In analyzing the site wiki at the online forum Circvs Maximvs I elucidate how the wiki helped diasporic elements constitute a shared identity from the ashes of conflict.

Copyright 2011 William R. Upchurch

BUILDING HOME ONLINE Building Home Online: A Community Wiki as Homeplace Rhetoric As of June 2010 Americans spent nearly a quarter of their time online engaged in social networking, a 43% rise from only a year before (Nielsen, 2010). Much of that success can be attributed to the continued growth of Facebook and Twitter as platforms , but it also speaks to what has been a natural impulse among internet users since it first became available for consumer use: the building and maintenance of community. Much of the glowing rhetoric surrounding the World Wide Web during its earliest days spoke of shrinking the world into a single global community or allowing friends and family to stay in touch more easily than ever before. This impulse has not diminished in the face of an increasingly consumer-oriented online

environment, with its auction sites, personalized advertisements, and one-click shopping. In fact, the success of Ebay and Amazon is in some part thanks to community-oriented recommendation and reputation technologies. Another technology that has been instrumental in forming communities online, especially in environments such as forums that lack Web 2.0 interactivity, is the wiki. Wikis are Web pages that users can edit freely, a situation fraught with potential for mischief unless norms are established and the users feel a sense of community responsibility to maintain the quality and credibility of the information on the site. Wikipedia, currently the 8th most visited site on the Web (Alexa, 2011), has an army of volunteer editors and community leaders that work to maintain its articles. Most websites with wikis do not have access to the manpower behind Wikipedias standards, so they rely on social sanctions and the good will of users to keep them clean. In this way, site wikis become social tools that contain not only information but the embedded norms and relationships that bind members of a virtual community together.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE

This paper examines the ways in which a global network of roleplaying game enthusiasts rhetorically constructed an online community out of conflict. Specifically, I will analyze the role of a site wiki in helping create a shared narrative that provided a rallying point for disparate communities to coalesce into a single community identity. This online forum, Circvs Maximvs (CM), was created as an alternative homeland for an online diaspora that had fractured from a common website, EN World, to a web of related communities. These communities attracted likeminded members and developed individuated cultures both reflecting and revising their original home site. Throughout 2006 and 2007, a number of catalytic events led some of these communities to the brink of dissolution, spurring the original sites owner to create CM. The reasons for doing so were two-fold: to create an unmoderated sister site to EN World where offtopic and off-color conversation could take place, and to create a homeplace to which the diaspora could return. To determine how effectively the new community integrated multiple communities I will analyze an incident that took place early on in the sites existence. This incident, dubbed Queeniegeddon on the wiki, illustrates the dynamic interplay between social and cultural forces that marked the first efforts to integrate multiple communities under a single community banner. The struggle was as much about whose discourses about the sites origins were dominantit was a war for definition of the space in which these cultures were clashing. Next, I will examine the wiki itself, as well as forum messages about the wiki, for evidence of homeplace rhetoric that seeks to create a safe space for the individuals in these communities to express marginalized voices and gain status through non-traditional means. In doing so, I seek to answer two questions. First, can a wiki create a homeplace for users of a website? Second, does the CM wiki help a multicultural online diaspora reimagine itself with a shared identity through a co-

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE constructed narrative that helps bridge the dialectics inherent to culture clash (Bernstein and Norwood, 2008). In using the term online diaspora throughout this paper I am differentiating it from a digital diaspora. The latter is used to describe diasporas organised on the internet (Brinkerhoff, 2004, p. 397), and how digital technologies help shape identity (Everett, 2009), impact power and politics in a global economy (Brinkerhoff, 2004, 2005), and challenge state boundaries, closed communities, fixed identities and territorialized notions of culture and cultural production (Hozic, 2001, p. 21). Studies of digital diasporas tend to focus on digital technologies as communication tools for dispersed peoples who identify with a geographical or historical community such as a nation, region, or tribe.

Members of an online diaspora, on the other hand, identify with a virtual community as a homeplace, and thus carry that identification across cyberspace as well as their non-virtual lives. The virtual community is viewed by its members as a place of origin where identities can be formed as well as expressed. Rheingold (1993) describes one early example of this in his recollection of the WELL virtual community, whose members met first online and then attended real-life WELL marriages, WELL births, and even a WELL funeral (p. ii). Cohen (1997) identifies several features common to diasporas: A collective memory and myth about the homeland . . . An idealisation of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety and prosperity, even to its creation. The development of a return movement which gains collective approbation.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate . . . [and] A sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement . . . (as cited in Brinkerhoff, 2004, p. 399) An online diaspora is not a gathering of a dispersed community in a space broadly defined as

digital technology. Rather, it describes a community dispersed from a virtual homeplace whose members reinforce in each other their links to the home culture and associated values (Brinkerhoff, 2004, p. 399). These elements of diaspora are evident in the discourse of members of the virtual communities described below. Next I will explain one way in which users of digital technology can form the powerful attachments to a specific community that allow such identification to take place. The CM Wiki as Fan Ideology Alienation has been examined along lines of class, race, gender, or sexual orientation when looking at how groups are excluded from society and how they formalize relationships on the margins (Warner, 2002). These characteristics are inherent traits, firmly tied to the notions of liberty and justice that guide our politics, our culture, and our criticism. The production of these characteristics in computer-mediated communication, however, foregrounds the performative aspect of all of these traits (Kendall, 1998). Online media in which authors are more or less anonymous, such as Internet forums, offer an almost unprecedented public area in which these inherent markers are rendered relatively invisible in the performance of identity and the development of groups.

Copyright 2011 William R. Upchurch

BUILDING HOME ONLINE Since the Internet first achieved meaningful public participation, a new kind of marginalization has been important to its growth: fandom. Fandom refers to any number of activities centered on communal appreciation of a pop culture phenomenon. It is typically used to refer to fans of media genres or objects that fall outside of mainstream appeal, such as comic books, science fiction, underground music, or anime. This is an important distinction for this paper, which I will expand upon later. Baym (2007) explains the activities and social relations found within fandom: Fandoms pool and generate collective intelligence and affect. Individuals create

selfconcepts and selfpresentations within fan groups. Some become well known to other fans through fandom. These groups also develop a sense of shared identity. Personal relationships are formed amongst some members of fan groups. Particular fandoms may have a shared ethos, but disagreement within fan communities is both common and, often, desirable. Fandoms are often highly creative, a phenomenon the Internet has brought to the fore and enabled in new ways. (para. 6) It is important to distinguish fandom as an axis of marginalization for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, it can help elucidate how, in an online environment with functionally limitless spaces for interaction, users can become powerfully attached to specific communities. Fans of an obscure Japanese anime series are rarely exposed to other fans in their everyday lives. They do not hear talk of the latest episode over the watercooler at work, at the bar in the evening, or in conversations with friends. They do not see commercials for the series on television, licensed products in the stores, or hear about the latest exploits of the shows stars in the daily gossip mill. The show doesnt make Top 10 lists, nor does it make lists of favorite shows or enter into

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE conversations about childhood nostalgia. It is as if the show, and therefore their passion, do not exist outside their own head and experience. This begins to sound quite similar to how other marginalized individuals experience the world. The Internet, since the beginning of its use as a public tool, has provided a space for

marginalized hobbyists to perform their identities. These performances naturally seek audiences, and thus communities were quickly built around topics such as Star Trek that dominated the user experience for many early adopters (Rheingold, 1993). The technology flourished by providing a space for communities that had otherwise heretofore been disconnected by space and time. This characteristic of the Internet exists to this day, though we live in a media environment that pays more attention to the geek culture that drove these underground communities. This may even cause those in fandom to feel even more marginalized, however, as mainstream society dips their toe into the object of obsession and then discards it as the next big thing comes along. All of this serves to explain the aforementioned community attachment felt by those in fandom. In addition, it highlights one reason for the highly affective, adversarial nature of communication found on many fan forums. Discussions often center around the superiority of one season, show, character, or edition over others, and communities quickly evolve subgroups who will reliably repeat their support for their given positions across multiple discussions and over the course of time. On forums devoted to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), for example, there are edition warriors who have chosen one of the four editions of D&D to champion and will do so at every turn, even in threads about other editions (which invariably leads to trolling and flaming 1). Much of this heated style also reflects the struggle to achieve recognition as what
1

Trolling refers to making incendiary statements in an online discussion that are meant to provoke strong reactions from other posters. Flaming refers to making personal attacks on posters rather than discussing the topic at hand.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Tulloch (1995) referred to as the powerless elite, or someone whose knowledge and skills are socially inert outside a forum but which can provide status in the online community.

Online fandom is thus a rich site for critics to explore the rhetorical construction of place. The term homeplace more precisely describes the goals of community-building that occurs as fans come together in new online spaces, as marginalized individuals seek a place that is safe for their outsider discourses, welcoming of their identities as fans, and offers the opportunity to establish and improve their status and power through non-traditional means. This expands upon the use of homeplace in the literature to describe rhetorical sites of resistance (hooks, 2001), sites of rhetorical and material exclusion (Peterson, 1998; Royster, 1996), and a means by which marginalized groups can stake a position within a dominant culture (Fiesta, 2006; Magdol, 1977). I particularly owe my conception of homeplace to Fiestas (2006) exploration of AfricanAmerican homeplace rhetoric in the mid-19th century, which names it as something that voiceless wanderers seek as a way to establish permanence and legitimacy in society. In seeking homeplace rhetoric online, I am asking about the reasons and the means by which semi-anonymous, geographically disparate users strive (and in some cases fight) to create homeplaces online. In the next section, I will address the specific reasons why the user community at Circvs Maximvs came into conflict over the nature and meaning of membership at the site. After that, I will analyze one means of achieving and maintaining a rhetorical homeplace onlinenamely, a site wiki. Finally, I will look at the CM wiki itself as well as how users talk about it to demonstrate the intersection between material and metaphorical homeplace rhetoric as experienced and created by the users themselves.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Queeniegeddon and the Long Road Home

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In 1998, Eric Noah founded the website Eric Noahs Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News to report rumors and leaks about the development of the upcoming edition of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game (D&D). A combination of high product enthusiasm and a fanbase that was well connected online vaulted the site to a prominence heretofore unseen in the online roleplaying community. The sites associated forum became a hotbed of activity related to D&D, with an energy unmatched even by the games official site. As the user community grew, so did those who were disenchanted by its draconian moderation rules, which forbade swearing, angry or insulting posts, and adult topics. It was known as Erics Grandma Rule, after the idea that nothing on the site should be said if it would offend Erics grandmother. This led to the amicable creation of separate discussion boards, the two most notable of which were Nutkinland and EN World. The user communities of these three boards overlapped, though each also attracted its own users over time, but the board cultures diverged rather quickly. EN World retained the original sites moderated board policies, while Nutkinland became a place known for crude humor, foul language, and sustained arguments laced with insults, personal enmities, and other forms of verbal and visual warfare. Shortly after the launch of 3rd Edition D&D, Eric closed his site down with the agreement that board users could migrate to EN World and continue as if nothing had happened. These communities continued to parallel one another for the next few years, while also spawning several related communities (see Figure 1). Nutkinland eventually became Nothingland for a short period of time, going through several owners before finally being shut down at the beginning of 2006. When rumors of Nothinglands imminent demise spread, EN Worlds owner, Russell Morrissey, created his own version of the unmoderated environment and

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eventually named it Circvs Maximvs. His intention was to create a place for all of the diasporic elements to reconvene once their sites had ceased to be (there were other sites in the network either dead or dying at the time). What happened next would come to define the new community for years to come. In an incident referred to as Queeniegeddon, a prominent Nothingland user posted a long invective against one of Circvs Maximvss most popular posters, Queenie. During the waning months of Nothinglands life, Circvs Maximvs had developed its own board culture, which more closely matched that of EN Worlds civility and friendliness than the unmoderated atmosphere for which it was originally planned. The attack was met with a mixture of confusion and repulsion by CM users, while word spread throughout the other communities that something was going down. One Nothinglander who took part in the attack, PWD, remembers it like this: There was a whole lot of fuel laying around. People were swimming in gasoline and didn't even know it. Stupid ENWorlders just learning that they could swear but thinking mommy and daddy moderator were there to keep them safe. Randomling huggler swine trying to make the world safe for feelings. Creepy fucking carebeards everywhere. A few NKL/NTL ex-pats who were tired of the constant gladiator games and came here for their retirement... and then a swarm of angry and hurt NTLers shocked by the imminent closure of their beloved community, the apparent (at the time) betrayal inherent in the repurposing and bacterial colonization of CM for the above weakling filth instead of the intended re-launch of said beloved community, and worst of all, trash-talking and rejoicing in the death of the NTL/NKL community by the ex-pats and know-nothings. People who weren't active at the time can't possibly imagine how volatile a

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE situation that was. Queenie wasn't doing anything particularly notable for the time... back then this board was overrun with "how ya doin hun? luv ya! hug!

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squee!" type threads, but for some reason she stood out to Bullitt. Probably mostly because he intended to start a firestorm and knew people liked her enough to rise to the bait. Once he started it, some of the traitorous (as seen at the time) ex-pats fired off with more rejoicing at the closure, and it was off to the races from there. This was our board, and god dammit we were taking it back and changing the culture to what god intended it to be all along. If there's a giant dogpile and rampaging inferno of a fight, so much the better, because fun for all amidst the reaping of the weak. Or at least that was the thinking. It was stupid, but it was based on real emotions and real communal happenings and culture clashes, and for all that it finally made it sink in to some people that no, this wasn't Randomling's 2.0, or EnWorld with swears. That doesn't justify anything, it's merely an explanation. (PWD, 2011) It is in this inciting incident that the rhetorical war for the board culture of CM was launched, with users generally falling on one of two sidesthose who wished it to become a hardcore home for the diasporic elements and those who wanted it to stay as it had been in the first few months of its existence. Because it had been specifically created for the former purpose, the stage was set for a drawn out process of coming together.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE The Coming of the CM Wiki The highly symbolic nature of online space cannot be overlooked. Everything from the URL they type to find the website in their browser to the communitys name and visual style points at both some intention of its creator as well as the disposition and focus of its members. Online communities are encountered materially in diverse ways: their users are in different locations, in different rooms, using different kinds of computers or mobile devices, at different times of the day. All of this creates a patina of the one-to-many communication of broadcast media, while retaining the many-to-many networked environment that defines much of the Internet user experience. CM resembles the music enthusiasts Baym (2007) describes, online

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communities are also taking a new form somewhere between the sitebased online group and the egocentric network (para. 3). Denied much of the context of face-to-face (F2F) interaction, users rely on the stories they tell to define what is talked about as well as how it will be discussed. Thus, communities are created in large part through narratives, both those that emerge from the behavior or a community as well as the stories that community members bring with them and share. It was important that stories from both sides be heard and incorporated into the lexicon of regular users for CM to coalesce into a community. Fishers (1984) narrative paradigm brings this communal function into sharp relief: Symbols are created and communicated ultimately as stories meant to give order to human experience and to induce others to dwell in them to establish ways of living in common, in communities in which there is sanction for the story that constitutes one's life. (p. 6)

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Narratives on the Internet present several problems for their creators, their audience, and critics (Booth, 2009; Ryan, 2002; Warnick, 2006). This study seeks to address some of these problems by viewing wikis as a narrative space in which stories are central to collaboration and the building of community identitysupport lifelong learning in a cultural setting[and] construct explanations [that] make sense of the world (Mulholland & Collins, 2002). The wiki becomes a center for narractivity, which Booth (2009) defines as the process by which communal interactive action constructs and develops a coherent narrative database (p. 373). This idea allows the narrative meaning of the text to visually reflect the community [and] helps fans construct community through narrative (p. 374). In his work on the Peuple Quebecois, Charland (1987) demonstrates how a community can be rhetorically constituted through narrative, weaving together Burke and Althusser (among others) to demonstrate the rhetorical nature being the target of discourse: Interpellation occurs at the very moment one enters into a rhetorical situation, that is, as soon as an individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed. An interpellated subject participates in the discourse that addresses himIn consequence, interpellation has a significance to rhetoric, for the acknowledgment of an address entails an acceptance of an imputed self-understanding which can form the basis for an appeal. Furthermore, interpellation occurs rhetorically, through the effect of the addressed discourse. (p. 138) From the first time one member of CM asked another member what the meaning behind a particular phrase, story, or meme was, both were interpellated as members of the same community. Charland explains this process when he states, Constitutive rhetorics are

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ideological not merely because they provide individuals with narratives to inhabit as subjects and motives to experience, but because they insert "narratized" subjects-as-agents into the world (p. 143). Members of different communities interacting in a shared space attempt to explain and understand the symbols that each uses in order to achieve a sense of shared identity. I will now explain how such a thing could happen in a community made up of more than a dozen separate forums in which hundreds of posts were made per day. This is where the CM communitys background in fandom becomes especially important. As I stated earlier, fan communities generally center around a shared appreciation for a nonmainstream media genre, in this case roleplaying games such as D&D. Fans do not have access to everyday celebration of and content produced for the objects of their fascination, so they must not only do this themselves but carve out a space for doing so. Queeniegeddon can be read as an attempt by one community to clear a space for themselves on existing territory, much as other marginalized populations have used disruptive tactics to claim rhetorical space within media, government, and other dominant discourses. When users from other websites were invited to CM under the pretense that it would be a homeplace, but then found it occupied by others without a shared culture or history, they successfully identified one of the best-loved, most sympathetic members of the board and attacked her without cause (Nareau, 2006). Forums are one such space, but many fans also have experience with wikis, a website that allows any member to alter, add, and delete content. Forum threads are seen as discussions, with each member owning the content of his or her posts and nothing more (though some deference in thread-related content is often given to the original poster, or OP). A wiki, on the other hand, is a communal workspace in which content ownership and stewardship is shared across the members of the forum. I argue that in the face of conflict between the sites original posters and the

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diasporic elements who felt that they had been invited to recreate the site in their own image, the implementation of the CM wiki functioned as homeplace rhetoric that finally settled the dispute over the nature of the site and its users. The CM Wiki as Constitutive Homeplace Rhetoric Thus far I have demonstrated the reasons why the user community at CM came together in the first place as well as looked at why, as members of fandom, it was important for them to attempt to build a community. As members of a fan community with a shared history in addition to diasporic qualities, these users sought an online space in which they could safely share their enthusiasm for non-mainstream topics such as roleplaying games. Marginalized peoples use homeplace rhetoric in order to carve out a safe space in which to participate in society. Marginalized fan communities often see online discussion forums as safe spaces for such activity. Circvs Maximvs was born in conflict between two communities, however, each claiming primacy over the content and tone of the forums. In the face of this conflict, homeplace rhetoric was necessary for the community to coalesce. Though many users attempted to bridge the gap in ad hoc fashion, symbolic convergence was slow and uneven until the implementation of the CM wiki, to which I now turn my attention. The CM wiki was announced on May 6, 2008 in a forum thread with the vague directive, Figure it could be good for a CM glossary, memes, instructions on features, stuff (Morrus). My analysis of the wiki and its effects will be conducted in two parts. First, I will examine the wiki entries themselves as they exist in early 2011. 2 Second, I will analyze forum posts and threads about the wiki itself and how users sought to understand and use it.

All instances of wiki content were verified between 6-7 March, 2011.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE The wiki is called the Library of Alexandria, keeping with the Roman-era theme of the website, and contains general information about the wiki as well as Circvs Maximvs. It once

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again reaffirms the sites anything goes ethos by instructing members that there is a hands-off moderation policy, which extends to the wiki. It follows this with the following characterization of its users, Considering the gaming-centric and social stereotypes of its userbase, the opinions on such are varied and sometimes outrageous, although for the most part common sense seems to rear its ugly head (but not always) (Morrus, 2010, para. 3). 3 This description of CMs users encourages the very thing it describes, that is users coming together out of conflict to form a community centered around their non-mainstream hobbies. The reference to social stereotypes reminds users that this is one of the few spaces in which their habits and interests are not only tolerated, but are shared and celebrated by their fellow posters. One other notable feature of the front page of the wiki is the inclusion of the map of related websites (see Figure 1). The path to Circvs Maximvs is shown as running directly from Eric Noahs Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News through only two sites: EN World and Nutkinland/Nothingland. The map thus provides users with a sense of coming back home, as well as acknowledging that two paths that brought users to the site. Users who argued that CM was a brand new thing that should be defined by its users without regard to its historical roots are reminded that the site has a history that parallels the hobby that brought them together in the first place. Those who believed that historical relationships should be the defining ethos of the new site can see that their voices are only one of many from the diaspora created by the initial site split. The color coding of the map provides another subtle yet powerful incentive for building communitythose sites in gold are shown to still be active, while those in grey (including

When citing wiki content, I list the most recent editor and the date of the most recent edit.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Nutkinland/Nothingland) are inactive sites that have shut down for one reason or another. This

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serves as a painful reminder of the transient nature of online community, and how fragile are the safe spaces for the marginalized voices of fandom. There are two prominent links on the front page that also bear examination. The first is memes, which are piece[s] of [Internet] content or an idea that's passed from person to person, changing and evolving along the way (Know Your Meme, n.d.). The memes page leads off with a definition of memes, and then the notation that Circvs Maximvs has an assortment of locallyevolved and imported memes. A sampling of this fine bouquet of cultural genetics is available below (PWD, 2010a, para. 2). Once again, this foregrounds the idea that CM is a conglomeration of cultures rather than something made whole cloth in its own image. This idea is consistent with one poster who, during Queeniegeddon, described CM as: [wanting] to be like America - the great melting pot. There are ENW people here and NTL people here, and others from parts unknown. Like immigrants from other countries, it's probably and rightfully expected that after a time they will give up their identification with their old countries and call themselves an American (or in this case, a CM'er). (King Stannis, 2006) Here King Stannis explicitly compares users from outside CM to immigrants and refers to the same tension between place of historical origin and current home felt by members of national diasporas. The list of memes upholds this idea, with those from Nothingland, EN World, and CM represented and credited as originating from the appropriate sites but all being hosted at the CM wiki, with its veneer of ownership and institutional power.

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The second front-page link is to members both past and present at CM. The text at the beginning of this page also calls attention to the multicultural background of CM and the wikis focus on this as a blended community. The following members are infamous, often in ways they'd probably prefer not to be. Several have displayed extreme asshattery and are mocked mercilessly for it; some of the examples go back years to episodes on Nothingland, and others are more recent or on EN World. Others, meanwhile, have been valuable and honored members of the community. (PWD, 2010b, para. 1) Like the memes page, the members page includes entries for users that never posted at CM but were famous on either Nothingland or EN World. These entries are used to explain inside jokes and memes used by members of these other boards. Recognition of this jargon by current members is one way in which the CM wiki functions as homeplace rhetoric, providing its users with narratives to inhabit as subjects and motives to experience [and making them] narratized subjects-as-agents within the CM community (Charland, 1987, p. 143). In addition to the functions of homeplace rhetoric mentioned previously rhetorical sites of resistance, sites of rhetorical and material exclusion, and a means by which marginalized groups can stake a position within a dominant cultureI argue that the CM wiki rhetorically constitutes a shared identity that allows diasporic elements to reimagine themselves after a period of integration with new cultures. The CM wiki is particularly suited for this function because it creates a space for shared narratives that interweaves multiple perspectives into a unified culture and bridges the dialectic of official and unofficial discourse in a way that encourages identification as CMers.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Before the creation of the wiki, attempts were made by users to create a shared lexicon

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for CM users, but because of the transient nature of forum threads (which become archived after inactivity and are most easily accessible thereafter by using the paid search function) only users who were active during certain periods were aware of them. One such thread, The CM/NTL/ENW Lexicon, was started by PWD on August 9th, 2007 and survived for approximately 48 hours before being relegated to obscurity (it was briefly resurrected that November for three additional posts) (PWD, 2007). Forum posts about the wiki seem to fall into two primary categories: calls for additions to the wiki, and questions about wiki terms and the wiki itself. Calls for additions to the wiki typically come from the site owner who attempts to minimize the number of content-free links on the wiki. All in all it seems that users have embraced the wiki as a space for creating a shared narrative for site members as well as to catalog the histories of the communities that built CM. Users tend to treat the two as separate media, however, and so while the wiki references happenings on the forums users rarely make reference to it in their day-to-day interactions. Conclusion Two incidents stand out in the development of Circvs Maximvs as a rhetorical homeplace for online roleplaying enthusiasts. The first, Queeniegeddon, was an extended conflict born of the culture clash between diasporic elements invited back home and a group of new users that had built a community ethos outside the historical context of the EN World/Nutkinland split. This event demonstrates the importance of online communities as a safe space for marginalized hobbyists to express their passion, share their knowledge, and gain status outside mainstream channels. Though CM was new and there were other options available for settling into an online

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE home, both groups fought hard to define it as a space in which their own brand of discourse would be celebrated. Over time, the two sides formed an uneasy truce with group norms emerging that

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governed the interaction between the more conflict-oriented style of the diaspora with the more intimate style of the original users. As interaction grew, the original CM crew expressed an interest in learning more of the history and memes of the diaspora, while the latter became more personally involved with the users as offline and cross-platform interaction increased (especially on Facebook and face-to-face at the annual game convention Gencon). This growing together culminated in forum threads attempting to form a CM lexicon, the kind of jargon that ties a community together, and finally in the creation of a site wiki that could permanently store such knowledge in an accessible way. As Booth (2009) notes, By interactively contributing to a growing enunciation of the meaning of a narrative, members of the wiki community integrate their communal/collective knowledge into a narrative framework. The narrative builds the community, just as the community builds the narrative (p. 387). In the case of fandom, I have demonstrated that in the case of fandom a wiki can create a homeplace for users of a website. I have suggested three characteristics of an online homeplace for marginalized fans: a place that is safe for their outsider discourses, welcoming of their identities as fans, and offers the opportunity to establish and improve their status and power through non-traditional means. A wiki lets users of a website participate in its own definition of fandom, communicating an open environment in which perspectives on important topics are communally derived and mutually respected. The means of inscription are available to all users, who become so by registering at the site. Site registration then becomes a public declaration of fandom, and the open discourse promised by a wiki links that public declaration to the legitimacy

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of ones discourse. Finally, participation in the wiki, either through the creation of entries or the editing of existing entries, offers a public space in which a users expertise can lead to status and power within the online home. In addition, wikis are permanent records of historical events, memes, and members in an online space that is usually characterized by ephemeral communication. Online communities, much like commercial or content-drive websites, thrive on new content, new members, and a high level of activity. These things often work in opposition to the development of community norms since each new member must be inducted and the churn of new content gives little grounding in a sense of space. A wiki, on the other hand, becomes a treasure whose integrity is guarded by vigilant members of the community. One incident from November 2008 in which a user named ArtQ attempted to erase some ignominy from his wiki entry only to be met with resistance from other users: I'm glad folks are noticing that. One of the great joys of wikis is the ease of undoing douchebag's changes. Every time he tries so desperately to improve his reputation, I just push one button and boom! his douchebaggery is visible to all again (barsoomcore, 2008). I also sought to answer whether or not the CM wiki could help a multicultural diaspora reimagine itself with a shared identity through a co-constructed narrative that helps bridge the dialectics inherent to culture clash. The CM wiki served as a type of constitutive rhetoric by encouraging users to become narratized subjects-as-agents in the space inscribed by the name Circvs Maximvs. That the wiki is so heavily identified with not only CM but its historical roots in the many websites that preceded it places anyone viewing or editing it within the narrative structure exemplified by the site map in Figure 1: the online communities from which CMs users come have a common origin and now a common endpoint. So while CM has its own

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culture, users, and norms, they are part of a common culture that all of its users can identify with. That the wiki is home to stories from all of these websites also serves to unify diasporic elements under a common banner, constituting them as both subject and speaker. The CM wiki exists at the intersection of production and consumption that marks participatory Web culture. Howard (2008) imagines a Web culture of dialectical vernacular in which users authority can be asserted by enacting an agency alternate to that of any institution (p. 492). At the time of Queeniegeddon, many of the diasporic users felt that a bait-and-switch had occurred, and that the institutional power of CM was being wielded to deny them voice. The wiki allowed vernacular voices to challenge this authority and have a hand in shaping the narrative that would define CM. According to Howard, The vernacular is powerful because it can introduce something other than the institutional into an institutional realm (p. 496). This was important in allowing users to feel like they had the opportunity to amass status and power outside institutional and traditional paths, fulfilling the third of the three characteristics of an online homeplace. I have demonstrated how a site wiki in the context of online fandom can rhetorically construct a homeplace in the online environment. The participatory nature of the wiki as well as its vernacular characteristics offer users the ability to inhabit a website as both subjects and agents of the discourses found within it. This constitutive function is necessary for a homeplace to be rhetorically constructed as a space for marginalized hobbyists to find and create a community. In an online environment in which marginalized voices must both verify the safety and appropriateness of their space as well as seek ways to gain status and power, a site wiki offers users the chance to co-create the discourses that encompass them. The CM wiki in particular helped diasporic elements emerge from a clash of cultures as they returned home and

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sought to create a new (old) space in which both their heritage as well as their experiences could integrate into a new space that was safe, welcoming, and empowering for their marginalized voices.

Copyright 2011 William R. Upchurch

BUILDING HOME ONLINE References Alexa. (2011). Alexa top 500 global sites. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/topsites

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Barsoomcore. (2008, November 24). Borko historical revisionist? [Msg 5]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=812882&postcount=5 Baym, N. K. (2007). The new shape of online community: The example of Swedish independent music fandom. First Monday, 12(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1978/1853 Bernstein, A. G., & Norwood, R. S. (2008). Ethnic differences in public participation: The role of conflict communication styles and sense of community. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 37(2): 119-138. Booth, P. (2009). Narractivity and the narrative database: Media-based wikis as interactive fan fiction. Narrative Inquiry, 19(2), 372-392. Brinkerhoff, J. M. (2004). Digital diasporas and international development: Afghan-Americans and the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Public Administration and Development, 24, 397413. Brinkerhoff, J. M. (2005). Digital diasporas and governance in semi-authoritarian states: The case of the Egyptian Copts. Public Administration and Development, 25, 193-204. Charland, M. (1987). Constitutive rhetoric: The case of the Peuple Qubcois. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73(2), 133-150. Everett, A. (2009). Digital diaspora: A race for cyberspace. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Fiesta, M. (2006). Homeplaces in Lydia Maria Childs abolitionist rhetoric, 1833-1879. Rhetoric Review, 25(3), 260-274.

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Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narrative as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1-22. hooks, b. (2001). Homeplaces (a site of resistance). In J. Ritchie and K. Ronald (Eds.), Available means: An anthology of womens rhetoric(s) (pp. 383-390). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Howard, R. G. (2008). The vernacular web of participatory media. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(5), 490-513. Hozic, A. (2001). Hello. My name is: Articulating loneliness in a digital diaspora. Afterimage, 28(4), 21-22. Kendall, L. (1998). Meaning and identity in cyberspace: The performance of gender, class, and race online. Symbolic Interaction, 21, 129-153. King Stannis. (2006, December 19). Queenie go back tp [sic] EN World [Msg 304]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=227873&postcount=304 Know Your Meme. (n.d.). Know Your Meme: Internet Meme Database. Retrieved from http://knowyourmeme.com/about Magdol, E. (1977). A right to the land: Essays on the freedmens community. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Morrus. (2008, May 5). We has a CM wiki [Msg 1]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=651583&postcount=1 Morrus. (2010). Main page. Retrieved from http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Mulholland, P., & Collins T. (2002). Using digital narratives to support the collaborative learning and exploration of cultural heritage. Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'02). Nareau. (2006, December 19). Queenie go back tp EN World [Msg 390]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=228069&postcount=390 Nielsen. (2010). What Americans do online: Social media and games dominate activity. Retrieved from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-doonline-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/

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Peterson, C. (1998). Doers of the word: African-American women speakers and writers in the north (18301880). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. PWD. (2007, August 9). The CM/NTL/ENW lexicon [Msg 1]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showthread.php?t=29593 PWD. (2010a). Memes. Retrieved from http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/wiki/index.php/Memes PWD. (2010b). Members. Retrieved from http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/wiki/index.php/Members PWD. (2011, February 18). Is intelligence an asset or a liability in a woman? [Msg 465]. Message posted to http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=1265131&postcount=465 Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Co. Royster, J. J. (1996). When the first voice you hear is not your own. College Composition and Communication, 47, 2940.

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BUILDING HOME ONLINE Ryan, M-L. (2002). Beyond myth and metaphor: Narrative in digital media. Poetics Today, 23(4), 581609.

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Tulloch, J. (1995). We're only a speck in the ocean: The fans as powerless elite. In J. Tulloch & H. Jenkins (Eds.), Science fiction audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek (pp. 144-174). New York, NY: Routledge. Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Public Culture, 14(1), 49-90. Warnick, B. (2006). Rhetoric online: Persuasion and politics on the World Wide Web. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

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Figure 1. Timeline and history of related websites. This figure shows the relationships and timeline of the websites related to the CM community.

Copyright 2011 William R. Upchurch